Ghosts In the Snow
by CatsOnMars
Summary: The life Jacob and Bella have together has become possible at many costs. One being that every Christmas, Jacob can find himself having to protect a secret of Edward's that could hurt Bella to know.
1. Part 1 of 2

_I would let her go. In the sense that I'd never show her how hard it  
was for me. But I would keep watch. You see, Jacob, you might  
leave her someday. I would always be waiting in the wings, hoping  
for that to happen._  
**Edward Cullen - ****_Eclipse_ Chapter 22**

* * *

He wakes up, and she is there. After six years of marriage, it can still take him by surprise every morning. It is unbelievable that he really has this.

She rests with one arm draped over his waist, some of her hair fallen across his chest. When he moves to try to get out of bed, the movement wakes her up and she grabs onto him tighter, grumbling, "No..."

He laughs into her hair as he kisses her head. "Come on, Bella," he says. "It's Christmas. If we don't get up we'll miss it..."

They find Sarah already wide awake, unsurprisingly, playing with a new toy pony. She is three years old, copper-skinned and black-haired like her father, though she inherited Bella's large round eyes and her knack for getting herself into trouble.

In the afternoon their house fills with the smell of gingerbread as Bella bakes. Jacob sits in a rocking chair finishing a carving of a hare he'll give to Renée and Phil when they come visit in a few days, and Sarah sits cross-legged in the chair right next to him watching.

Sarah always loves to watch him carve. When Bella isn't around to hear it and disapprove of him telling her things that could scare her, he often tells her stories as he does it.

What he tells her are simpler and more colorful versions of Quileute legends, ancient as well as very new ones. Stories about the spirit warriors, the protectors, the cold ones, the treaty. And one about a very beautiful woman who was neither Quileute or a blood drinker but became a friend to both, who was loved deeply by both a protector and one of the cold ones. This story tells of how both sides became united when neither of them would allow her to be harmed and had to protect her from other cold ones from a very distant land who would have forced her to become one of them. There was a great battle in which one of the wolves were lost before she could be safe again and go whichever way she chose.

When Jacob tells her about these legends, his voice changes, sounding very strong and serious. He becomes so absorbed in it, as well as what he is carving, that he seems hardly aware of anyone with him. He is oblivious to surroundings and distractions, pausing in his speech only every once in a while to blow on the wooden shape he's working on and get it clean of shavings and dust. Sometimes it seems like the story he tells is helping the detailed form emerge from the formerly shapeless wood, his hands responding directly to the images he describes. Or remembers. Pieces he started meaning to make into canoes or deer have sometimes ended up as wolves howling or crouched in attack positions by the time he was done talking.

He tells the story of the human girl who was loved by both families more than any other. The way he tells it, her name is never given, and the ending makes it a little unclear what happened to her.

This is the one he tells today, and he is getting near the end when Bella comes from the kitchen announcing that she's ready for Sarah to help her cut out cookies, and she immediately loses interest and slides off of her chair. She already knows the ending of this story quite well.

Now left alone with the images in the story still dancing through his mind, Jacob stops his carving a while, looking over at some of the framed pictures on top of their fireplace. One picture is of the pack together at Emily's house, taken before the Clearwaters joined them and they were only five. His eyes focus directly on Jared's face where he stands in the middle with a mild smirk.

He does not tell the stories for his daughter as much as he does for himself. It is a way of detaching himself from the events, moving on. If they are just silly stories to tell his kids, then that world is mostly left behind. Then he can let himself believe sometimes as most people do that Jared was lost in a car accident eight years ago.

At the same time, it is for remembrace. Maybe she has to forget most of the time in order to live with herself, and maybe he prefers to forget, but honor must be given. He cannnot forget the sacrifice that this life cost them.

And not just on Jared's part. Not at all.

* * *

He wakes up, and she is there. After seven years of marriage, it can still take him by surprise every morning. It is unbelievable that he really has this.

As she is still sleeping he brushes some of her hair away from her face, barely touching her, and he thinks he sees her just barely smile for a moment as if responding to it. Then she turns more onto her side and curls in toward him, arms wrapping around herself a little like she's cold. He immediately pulls her against him and wraps an arm around her. It's amazing what it feels like, something as small and mundane as this—just being able to see how getting herself closer to him for warmth is a reflex she can now act on in her sleep.

After a while she opens her eyes, rubs them tiredly with little fists—which always looks so damn cute he has to smile down at her—and looks at his face. With a slow, lazy smile, she says, "Hey."

He smiles back and kisses her. "Merry Christmas, Bells."

She rolls away from him and sits up to get out of bed. "Haha," she laughs. "Christmas bells..."

As soon as they join Sarah in the living room, she starts breathlessly insisting she saw Santa Claus late last night. When they humor her she can tell they don't really buy it, and Jacob tries to tell her how Santa would never allow himself to be seen anyway. After dark when they take her out for a drive to look at Christmas lights, she's still going on about what she swears happened.

"Honey, if Santa really saw you still up after your bedtime, I doubt he would have left you all those presents," Bella says.

"He didn't see me! I just know he was there."

"Wait," Jacob says with a skeptical smirk. "So you really _saw _him, or did you just know he was there?"

"Well...I saw the plant he knocked over, after I heard it."

Bella and Jacob both laugh.

"You mean the one Pepper knocked over?" Jacob asks.

"It wasn't Pepper! She was under the table in the kitchen looking scared the whole time."

"Why would a cat be scared of Santa?"

"Maybe she's been naughty."

They laugh again, giving each other a knowing look.

"Sarah, I think I get what this is about," he says. "Look, if you're honest and you tell us_ you _knocked it over while you were up trying to spy on Santa Claus, I promise Mommy and I won't be mad."

"But I didn't! It was _him!_"

"Sarah, it's like we told you. He never comes until after you go to bed like a good girl...And he won't come next year at all unless you stop bouncing around back there and put on your seatbelt."

Bella looks to the side at him with an amused smile when she instantly fastens her seatbelt and goes quiet. He grins back, reaching over to her lap and taking her hand.

Later, when they get home and out of the car, Bella is asking Sarah what movie she wants to watch tonight when something makes Jacob abruply stop and look out toward the trees at the side of their house which sink back into darkness. His eyes go wide as a reflexive shiver courses down his spine, quick as a flash of lightning, as he catches on the wind a hint of a familiar scent that he hasn't smelled in a long time. Fragments of the day become incompletely pieced together in his head. It can't be...

But practically as soon as he notices it, it is gone and it can't possibly have ever been there. No. His mind was playing tricks on him...

"Jake?" Bella asks, seeing him staring off into the darkness. "What is it?"

He turns back to her and shakes his head, heading inside with her and Sarah. "Nothing..."

* * *

He wakes up, and she is there. After eight years of marriage, it can still take him by surprise every morning.

Jacob now understands what people mean when they say how powerful a thing it is for a parent to watch their child sleep. He has known that. To see his daughter like that, in a state of being so peaceful, safe. Every slow, relaxed breath which he can see and hear her take is like something he can feel being drawn from somewhere in him. To think, he gave this life. She is_alive_. It is like a miraculous phenomenon to behold.

And it is actually not that different, as he realizes now looking at Bella's peaceful face, for him to watch his wife sleeping. She is still living and breathing like any human because...sometimes he isn't even sure why and how. He has pushed the past away so much that somewhere along the way he seems to have lost the security of a definite reason for all of this. She could so easily not be here now. She could be cold and unchanging, her pulse stopped, trapped in a body that is not even capable of slipping into the solace of sleep and infinite land of dreams. Sometimes it feels like she is still so dangerously close to slipping away from him and he needs to hold on so tight.

* * *

This year, after they've opened presents, Bella goes over to the Uleys' to help Emily with the cooking for dinner for a while. Soon after that, Sarah wants to go play in the snow so she goes outside with him, holding his big gloved hand when they walk over icy areas so he won't let her slip.

Bella comes back home two hours later to find Jacob on the floor holding Sarah's tiny, violently shivering form as close to him as possible with a blanket wrapped around her whole body, his eyes shocked and desperate.

"What _happened?_" she gasps as she drops to the floor next to them. After seeing Sarah's eyes squeezed shut and her teeth chattering uncontrollably, she touches her pale face and her eyes go wider as she feels how cold she is.

He shakes his head miserably—he looks almost like he could cry, seeing his daughter like this. "I can't believe I let it happen...We were just chasing each other around throwing snowballs, and she got so far away from me I lost her...I never thought she'd get_ near _any thin ice..."

"Oh my God," Bella says, her voice barely getting out.

"Bella..." Jacob had never sounded so terrified. "Bella, if I hadn't been the one with her...If I hadn't been able to jump right in after her, or had found her just a little later..."

"Don't think about that," she said, leaning against him and holding Sarah along with him, leaning her head in against hers. "You did save her."

Bella calls Emily to explain why they have their hands full and can't be expected for dinner after all. It isn't until later, after Sarah is finally perfectly warm again and they've given her some hot chocolate and put her to bed, that he tells Bella the rest. He shows her the still soaking coat that Sarah was wearing when she fell in, and the huge torn holes in the back. They are where great, razor-sharp teeth were holding onto her clothes exactly as a dog carries one of its pups around by the scruff of its neck.

"I needed to get her out of the cold as fast as possible," he explains. "I knew if I phased I could get back here in less than a minute...She was in so much shock I doubt she remembers anything clearly. If she was even conscious for much of the time."

Bella grips the coat tightly in her fingers where the tears are, still shaking all over, and holds it close against her chest as if she is still holding her child. Then she looks up at him meaningfully. "You being a werewolf saved her life," she says.

Somehow, hearing this only makes him look more troubled. She puts down the jacket and circles her arms loosely around his waist, looking up at his face. "What?"

He shakes his head, reaching up one hand to hold her face. "Sarah is such a sharp kid," he says. "She's_ too _smart. I know we may not have a problem with her knowing everything once she's a lot older if it's ever necessary, but sometimes I think she somehow already knows in her gut that her dad is different. Sometimes she talks like she thinks I could practically stop moving cars and nothing at all can happen to her while I'm around."

"She has a wild imagination," she says. "You know that. And just about every kid thinks their dad is like Superman."

He only looks a little comforted, and she leans against his chest, holding him tighter. "Don't worry," she tells him. "You never_have_ let anything happen to us, have you?"

He smiles a little and looks at the clock. "Think we could make it over for leftovers later if she sleeps off all this exhaustion soon?"

Bella thinks about it and then frowns a little. "Your dad would probably still be over there. Which means Charlie would still be over there, and..."

"And we'd spend the rest of the night having to come up with answers to his questions about what happened," he says, catching on.

"Instead of just dealing with it later," Bella confirms, nodding grimly.

Somehow she looks pretty exhausted herself by now, so Jacob kisses her head again and says, "I'll go put us together a fantastic Christmas dinner of sandwiches and cookies."

"That sounds great," she says with a tired smile.

When he comes back from the kitchen a while later with two plates of food, he finds her back in Sarah's room, lying on the bed next to her sitting up on her elbow as she watches her sleeping. Bella smiles at him and whispers, "I'll be out in a minute," so he starts eating in the living room watching the TV.

Half an hour later he goes back into the bedroom and Bella is also asleep, lying facing Sarah with one arm wrapped loosely around her. Jacob sits on the edge of the bed and watches them closely, feeling his heart getting gripped into a tight knot just at this simple sight. God. Their breathing is almost perfectly matched. He knows nothing will make him leave this room again until one of them wakes up. Somehow, tonight, he feels the need to stay near and watch over them.

They are both here. Alive and tangible and his. When did that happen?

* * *

The next Christmas, Emily and Sam's daughter Anna comes over to play with Sarah. While they're outside making a snowman, Bella flits around the living room picking up all the trash left from unwrapping gifts, while Jacob just sits on the couch with his feet up on the table chewing on a toothpick. As the rest of him calmly sits still, his eyes follow all of Bella's busy movements around the room. Then as she comes to his side and reaches across him to pick up a bow from the couch, he grabs her around the waist and pulls her down onto his lap.

"_Ah!_" she says, dropping all of the mounds of gift wrap she was carrying and then grinning and hitting his chest playfully. "Hey!"

With a quiet, deep laugh, he holds her close against him and kisses the soft skin under her jaw, right where her pulse runs, then her lips, then her neck again at the opposite side. She closes her eyes, her breath already rising a little in response to him and the corners of her mouth turning up in a smile.

"I've been thinking about being alone with you all day," she says softly.

"We are alone," he mutters.

She laughs lightly. "Not exactly..."

One minute later, Jacob opens the front door and calls out to the kids. "Hey, Sarah! Mom and I need to run to the store. Why don't you and Anna go over to her house to play for a while?"

"Okay..." Sarah sounds reluctant, but she and Anna start sauntering through the snow to the sidewalk.

"Careful where it's icy, no running! Hey Anna, _put your hat on_, girl!"

Bella is cracking up laughing, still curled up on the couch when he shuts the door and runs back to her, making the whole couch rock back when he hops onto it.

"Great," he says as Bella is already starting to unbutton his shirt and straddling him on his lap. "Em'll have them occupied forever with her infinite supply of baked goodies."

She keeps laughing against his lips as she kisses him. "Brilliant."

He grins diabolically and says, "Merry Christmas," the words breaking with his own laughter.

* * *

Later that night, Bella gets an awful headache and goes to lie in bed for a while, and Jacob sits in his favorite chair by the fireplace working on his latest carving. Sarah takes her usual seat in the chair next to him to watch.

"You have fun with Anna?" he asks.

She only nods, and he studies her face for a moment. Just a nod is a very quiet response for Sarah.

"Will you make a vampire this time?" she asks after his attention is back on the carving.

He gives a short laugh, raising his brow in surprise. "No. I...uh...don't do those." He looks back away from her, the corners of his mouth raising a little at how bare the explanation sounds to himself.

"But you know what they look like."

He smiles. "They look pretty much like people, I guess."

"No, you know what the ones in the stories you've told me looked like."

"It's not like they're _real_, honey."

He is unfased, still concentrating on the strokes of his knife against the wood, and she goes quiet for a moment. Then she says, "I saw one of them."

Jacob's hands freeze, the knife stopping. But he only raises an eyebrow and smirks a little as he looks back over at her. "What now?" he says.

"One of the cold ones was here. I saw him."

"Oh yeah? When?"

"Today, outside. When me and Anna were going to her house."

"Right," he says with a smile. "Like you saw Santa Claus that one year, right?"

"No, really! He was standing by a tree next to the sidewalk."

"And what in the world makes you think he was a...vampire?" It is strangely difficult for him to use the word. He rarely does anymore, even when referring to the legends.

"He had gold eyes, just like the stories say. And he looked whiter than anyone I ever saw. His face was like the _snow_."

Jacob's expression is now very controlled, his voice careful. "Did this man talk to you?"

"No. When I saw him there he smiled. Then I looked behind me for Anna to see if she'd seen him, too, and when I looked back he was already gone. Like he disappeared!"

His breath catches a moment, but he doesn't let it show. His hands fiddle awkwardly with the piece of wood in his hands like they can't move right anymore, and he puts it and the knife down on the little table in between his and Sarah's chairs.

"Sarah..." He smiles at her tolerantly. "You know those are just stories. They're not real."

She frowns, heavy disappointment weighing down her whole posture as she looks down at her lap. He pats her head, and then with a sudden thought he gently lifts her chin up to make her look at him.

"You didn't try to feed any of this story to your mom, did you?" he asks.

Sarah shakes her head, still pouting.

He nods. "Good...You know how she worries about me scaring you with those stories."

* * *

By the next year they've had their second daughter Allie.

"I am the ghost of Christmas past" says a morose voice from the television. Sarah doesn't mind black and white movies like other kids. They both think she is still on the couch watching it as Bella changes clothes and Jacob is with her in the room playing with the baby to make her stop crying.

When Allie finally gets quiet and starts looking tired, Jacob lays her back down in her crib.

"How's your cold?" Bella asks as she finishes putting in her earrings.

"Little better," he says. "I still can't believe it. I _never_ get sick."

She says with a smile, "Even you aren't invincible...I made some juice out of what was left of all those oranges we bought for Claire's school fundraiser. That'll help you get better."

"_All _of them?" he asks incredulously, trying to imagine squeezing the juice out of that much fruit.

She giggles. "Fifteen oranges. I didn't want them to go to waste..."

"Wow, aren't you the sweetest?" he says in a thoughtful tone, hugging her from behind and kissing the top of her head. "I should marry you."

She turns to face him and smiles up at him. "You did."

He feigns shock. "Really? What did I do to deserve that?"

She laughs again and kisses his shoulder. "You _better_ get over this cold soon so I can—"

Her words are cut off when they hear a short, high scream and a heavy crash from the kitchen. Bella gasps loudly, her and Jacob briefly exchanging scared glances, and then she follows him as he runs out to see...

"Oh God," Bella mouths more than says, her breath gone.

A tall shelf in the kitchen is completely knocked over on the floor. The stool Sarah was standing up on to try to reach the hidden tins of gingerbread and sugar cookies on the top shelf is crushed into pieces under its weight. Several knives are scattered, one having landed point-down with the tip of the blade stuck into the floor.

But Sarah is nowhere near it, sitting on the kitchen counter at the opposite end of the room with her eyes still wide with fright. The window behind her is open, and just as Jacob notices this she starts shivering from the icy breeze and slides down to the floor.

His look of shock just starts changing to a completely perplexed one as he looks down at his daughter, but he doesn't have time to completely register the confusion before he sees Bella's figure starting to sway out of the corner of his eye. He moves just in time to catch her from falling to the floor after she faints.

He isn't superdad today, he is a werewolf with a cold and he wasn't the one who was there when it happened, but he's still fast.

As he carries Bella to the couch to lay her on it, Sarah follows him still looking terrified and not taking her eyes from her mother.

"How do you always manage to find new ways to get yourself hurt?" Jacob says to her scoldingly. It comes out sounding more harsh than he means it to; something about this is so wrong and he's fighting the thought. "You're worse than your mom."

Sarah has tears welling in her eyes now as she watches Bella, who is just now opening her eyes again but still looks a little dazed and disoriented. "What's wrong with her?"

"Nothing, honey, she'll be fine," Jacob says in a rush. "You just scared her." He waves her over to him and puts his arm around her shoulders to give her a push forward toward the couch. "You sit with her, okay?"

All the commotion has made Allie start crying again. But before he even goes to her again, Jacob swiftly makes it back to the kitchen, steps over dented food cans and crunches spilled Froot Loops under his feet as he goes right past the mess on the floor to shut the window.

He never tries to ask Sarah how she ended up all the way across the kitchen in time because he doesn't want to hear her say she doesn't know. He won't let himself think back to strange things that have happened before, on Christmas, what Sarah told him last year, what he thought he sensed outside one time long before, shivering not from the cold. He doesn't let himself believe this all points to anything.

Even so, he is grateful that Bella didn't have a chance to see the open window.

* * *

The next Christmas, nothing out of the ordinary happens besides Jacob having to take Bella to the hospital after she slips on some ice outside and breaks her arm. Of course, Bella hurting herself isn't really unordinary at all.

Nothing happens the next Christmas either. While the radio plays Paul McCartney and Brenda Lee, Bella braids Allie's hair as she sits on her lap. Sarah now likes to have her own hair cropped short like a boy. Jacob sits on the floor with a lollipop in his mouth playing a card game with her and laughing at her whenever she tries to cheat by looking at his cards. When some friends are over later to have dinner and exchange presents, Quil does a ridiculous dance to "Run Rudolph Run" that has both Allie and the Uleys' son Steven rolling on the floor in laughter.

The next year, a storm keeps everyone inside most of the day. Bella dusts off the picture frames and carvings on top of the fireplace, her hands slowing when she touches the one with the picture of Jared with the other boys. Allie draws their cat Pepper with her new art set, and Jacob draws Allie. Bella cries watching _It's a Wonderful Life_, sitting in the dark with Jacob's arm around her and head leaning against hers.

For a long time, nothing happens, and Christmas is just Christmas, and Jacob starts to think he may never understand the significance of this day and the strange things that have come on it in the past. Nothing happens, but he still wonders and worries every year. The season of ice brings dark memories, ghosts whispering from pictures on the fireplace and the dark space between distant trees outside where anything could be hiding. The howling winter wind that makes the house creak while he lies in bed holding Bella at night makes him think of her freezing against him a night long ago, a sleeping bag, sides of a tent getting rocked violently in the storm. And a voice that he cannot remember the exact sound of and doesn't want to. What did he say that night?

_"I would keep watch"_—

No. These things are gone along with the ripping, cold wind, safely forgotten. Too sharp to touch. Some nights after the girls have gone to sleep, Bella lies back against his chest in front of the flames in the fireplace, safe and warm with her skin taking a warm amber color in the flickering light. Some of these nights he thinks back to how she used to seem to get cold all the time without him holding her, when they first started spending more time together, and how that now seems like a different Bella from a different lifetime than the one he's now married to. There is never any question anymore why she chose fire. They can't afford that. She has always been good at pushing anything far out of her mind that would upset her to dwell on too much. He thinks this may never stop both assuring and worrying him.


	2. Part 2 of 2

When the next Christmas comes, everything goes smoothly again until 11:30 at night when Jacob leaves the bathroom and notices a light is still on in the kitchen. He walks over to the doorway and is right about to flick off the light before he notices Sarah sitting at the table in her pajamas.

"Oh—Hey, honey," he says in surprise, walking into the kitchen. "What are you doing still up?"

She looks up at him and just stares a while before answering. She is clutching a glass of milk on the table, but it looks like she hasn't touched it.

"I couldn't sleep," she says in a dull tone.

His brow narrows as he examines her distracted expression. He walks over to the table and sits in the chair next to her. "Okay," he says decidedly. "What's up?"

Sarah slowly meets eyes with him, starting to look a little scared. "Promise you won't just act like I'm crazy."

He tilts his head a little. "Why would I ever do that?"

"Dad..." She loses her voice a little for a moment, having to stop to take a long breath. "Dad. I saw him again."

All of his bones feel chilled for a second. He gathers his breath, looks at her steadily, and says, "Who?"

"You know," she says, her voice rising. "You already know who I'm talking about. The man I told you I saw before. That..._vampire_."

"_Shhh!_" he says to quiet her down, looking quickly in the direction of his and Bella's room.

Immediately afterwards, of course, he sees Sarah's reaction to this and knows it was a huge mistake. She also looks in that direction, seeming to realize exactly what his nervousness means.

"Alright..." Jacob sighs. "_What_ are you talking about? What man?"

"It was when I was outside helping Allie look for her mitten," she starts to explain, ignoring his questions. "I could have sworn there wasn't anybody else around and I didn't hear anybody coming, and then when I turned toward the sidewalk he was right there walking. When he saw me looking at him he smiled and said, 'Hello there' and went on walking. I don't think he thought I would recognize him. But it was like he was _pretending_ to just be walking by after I saw him."

Jacob starts shaking his head, but he doesn't interrupt her. As much as he can't let it show, he needs to hear all of this.

"I tried to follow him, but he could walk so fast, right through the snow. I lost sight of him behind the neighbors' fence and ran to catch up, but in just a few seconds he'd disappeared. I looked all around for him, but he was just gone!"

"So it was some guy you've seen before in the neighborhood," Jacob says, but he knows his concern is showing all along. "Maybe he has friends here he always visits during the holidays."

"No. I swear, he _couldn't_ have been human. It was just like you always described them in the legends. His skin, his eye color. It was freezing and he wasn't even wearing a coat!"

"Sweetheart," he starts in a slightly mocking voice, "if you were so convinced you'd just seen a vampire walk by, why in the hell would you _follow him?_"

"Oh, what's the big deal!" she says, starting to get frustrated. "You know him, don't you? That must be why he keeps coming here. So he can't be dangerous."

For a moment Jacob can't find any words, just staring down at the table.

"I'm a big girl now, Dad," she says. "Don't lie to me. I already know. I've had it figured out for a while. About Jared, and Mom, and you. I know that you're a werewolf!"

His eyes go wide, his mouth dropping open a little in shock, and then he just slowly starts shaking his head again. "Listen...I don't know where you get these ideas. I'm just a normal guy."

"No, you're _not_ normal! I've always known it. All the times you've been able to do things...When I was little and I fell through that thin ice! Nobody else would be able to get me out like you did. I've always remembered...I passed out and dreamed I was being carried by this big animal, and we were moving so fast I couldn't even see where we were. I know now it wasn't a dream...And everything else. Your friend Jared died—"

"In a car accident," Jacob interrupts in a firm voice.

"Or protecting Mom from that bad vampire family. Because she wanted to be with you. _She's_ the woman in the story. Right? It says that one of the wolves was killed in that fight. Jared died two years before you and Mom got married. That's how long you always tell me you were_ together _before you got married. The stories also say it was the biggest wolf pack there's ever been in the tribe. There were supposed to be ten. Including Jared, all of your old friends make ten. Uncle Embry, Uncle Quil, the Clearwaters..."

"Okay, stop, stop." As Jacob sighs, his face briefly shows the smallest incredulous smile. Then with a resigned look, he hesitates in silence for a long moment before looking straight back at her and saying, "Alright, listen. First of all....You must not _ever_ assume that a vampire isn't dangerous, no matter who they are—"

Sarah immediately flies out of her chair and throws her arms around him. "I knew it!" she says.

"Okay, settle down," he says, laughing a little as he hugs her back. "I swear to God, all you got from your mom is her worst parts. We're talking about real vampires and werewolves. You should be terrified, not excited. Now _listen_..."

He takes a firm hold of her shoulders to pull her back away from him and make her look at him again. "This is very important," he says. "I know it might be pretty difficult to go on pretending you don't know anything. But you have to swear to me you'll never mention anything about this to your mother. Understand?"

She only looks confused. "But...why?"

Jacob sighs again, trying to find a good way to explain. "Because...I'm just afraid it could hurt her if she knew that he's been here. And besides, if he wanted her to know, then he wouldn't be hiding himself like this."

"But what is he coming here for?"

He shakes his head. "I don't really know for sure. But my guess would be that...maybe he just misses seeing her."

"Does she miss him, too?"

Jacob frowns, unable to look straight in her eyes for a second. "There's no doubt in my mind."

Sarah still looks a little unsatisfied, almost worried. "I don't understand...She _did_ want to be with you, didn't she? I thought that was why..."

"Yes, of course she did. She did. But it was pretty hard for her. When you get older, you'll see...sometimes these things just aren't...simple."

She thinks about it a while and then nods, seeming able to comprehend that much. "It's okay. I'll never tell her anything."

He smiles and takes her face in his hands, leaning forward to kiss her forehead. "That's my girl."

She starts to look excited again. "So the way you're always so warm when everyone else isn't...Is that because....?"

"That's right. It's one of those weird wolf things."

"But what's it like changing? Does it hurt?"

He smiles bigger as he remembers how much she sounds like Bella asking him all the same questions in his garage a long time ago. "No, it doesn't hurt. It just takes getting used to."

She is beaming now, overjoyed to have everything suddenly make sense to her. "There's so much I want to know..."

"I bet. But there'll be a better time for asking these questions."

"Oh, I'll _never_ be able to go to sleep now," she groans as he stands up.

He laughs. "Just try."

When Jacob returns to the bedroom, Bella has woken up and turns over to face him as he gets back in bed.

"Did I hear Sarah with you?" she asks.

"Yep," he says. "She just had a headache and couldn't find the Tylenol. Sorry if we woke you up."

"Mm. It's okay..." She moves close to him, wrapping an arm around his waist. "Now I don't even feel like I can get back to sleep, though..."

Even in the darkness, without being able to see his face clearly, she can perceive how he is barely hearing her words because of how still and unresponsive he is lying next to her, as if deep in his own thoughts. She sits up on her elbow and looks at him. "Something wrong?" she asks.

He reaches out to her in the dark, one arm wrapping around her waist. "No," he whispers.

She brings her face close to his and they stay with their foreheads rested together a long moment.

He says in a struggling voice, "Bella..."

"What?" she says gently, smoothing her hand over his chest and then running just her fingertips under the edge of his shirt at his neck to rest on his bare skin underneath.

He hesitates one more moment, and then says, "Sometimes I just want you to talk to me."

She grins. "What do you mean? About what?"

"Are you really okay? Are you happy?"

She goes into a brief, surprised silence next to him before she is able to respond. "Jacob, how could I not be happy?"

He looks at her face thoughtfully, trying to see everything there in the dim light, and runs his fingers through her hair and along her neck. "You never talk about him."

The conflicted pain slowly registers in her eyes as he feared. But perhaps it doesn't look as bad as he expected.

"No. I guess I don't," she says simply, her face quickly shifting to a more detached expression.

"I'm sorry. I just...I hope you don't feel like you can't. It's not like I want you to just forget he existed."

"I...I know. Don't be sorry. And please don't think you have to worry about me. I mean...I think I'm actually getting along pretty well now, considering everything, don't you think? Give me some credit."

"Sorry. I can't help it, I just...Well. I guess I should just shut up now."

With the light, quiet giggle that comes from her then, he knows she has managed to push him completely out of mind again. It is now far past midnight and suddenly everything is back to feeling safe and secure.

She whispers, "Come here," pulling at his shirt and kissing him eagerly. Settling him in between her legs. Grabbing his hair as his back starts to rise and fall in the darkness that doesn't completely hide from him the tears that well in her eyes after a while.

She cried the first time he made love to her, feeling him completely after using so much energy for so long trying to keep him a safe distance away and not feel how it hurt her. Sometimes she still does when they're together. He can't imagine her not always being this way. Constantly emotional, so easily turned into a shaking nervous wreck, her still-pounding heart so often functioning on overload. Tripping all the time with her useless feet and dropping dishes so often they're all used to hearing the shattering noises from the kitchen. Uncontrollably going into tears when she's mad, when she's scared, when she's extremely happy. Not delicate or weak, he would say. Maybe Bella just feels things more intensely. He can't blame her too much for getting so overtaken by certain feelings before that he thought were just insane.

He cannot see her having chosen that other life and being something different now, always graceful and collected, not even being able to cry. The woman she has turned into has no conceivable connection to such a version of herself. He can be hopeful when he looks at her as having grown into someone who is all his Bella, different from the person she was at eighteen. Maybe, he hopes, it makes her miss everything that meant so much to that younger version of herself a little less the more she grows more comfortably into this very mortal skin.

* * *

One year later, they find a broken tree ornament on the floor in one corner of the living room. When Sarah says the cat was probably playing with it, Bella jokes, "Or maybe Santa Claus broke it. Remember that year he knocked over one of our plants?"

Sarah and Jacob both laugh, but then they exchange a secret, knowing smile and he winks at her.

Late that night, Jacob goes outside to take out the trash. He decided a couple months ago that it's time to give up phasing and he hasn't done it since, but there is enough of the wolf still left in him for the loathsome scent to hit him as strongly as ever as soon as he is out in the cold night air.

He doesn't look around for him. He doesn't have to. After setting down the trash bags, he crosses his arms and stares up at the sky a long moment before speaking, wanting to ignore it just a while longer.

Finally he reluctantly says, "You know you aren't supposed to be here."

Far to Jacob's right, the much shorter figure steps out with that familiar surreal grace from behind a tree. His skin is so pale that it blends in with the surrounding snow and makes him appear almost translucent, like a ghost.

Jacob turns to face him and they just stand looking at each other for a long time. Even though it shouldn't surprise him, it is an unpleasant shock to his system to see how he really has not changed at all after all this time. The color of his eyes, his hair, even the distinctive and slightly creepy way he stands so completely, patiently still like a human never does—everything takes Jacob back to places he would rather not return to, and his breath stops for a second as he has to register all of this completely. It's him, all right. Not just some bad dream constructed from memory.

And he knows right before Edward Cullen speaks that hearing his voice again is going to be just as bad as the rest.

"No, I am not," he says smoothly and calmly. "I suppose this means you need to alert the others who are also still capable of phasing that a Cullen has crossed the treaty line."

Jacob relaxes his arms, putting his hands in his pockets, and looks down to kick around a chunk of ice. He knows Edward already sees his answer in his head anyway, so he takes his time. "No," he finally says. "I'll let this one slide. But only because it's Christmas."

Edward doesn't laugh, evidently taking in some of Jacob's thoughts he hears then before he explains. "I only ever come here on Christmas."

The inevitable question is one he doesn't really want to hear the answer to. "...Why?"

Edward looks up at the sky thoughtfully, just as Jacob was doing earlier, and doesn't seem to feel like acknowledging it out loud either. "Did you know there are more suicides on this holiday than any other time of the year?" he then asks.

Jacob just raises an eyebrow.

"I suppose it makes sense...because of what this day means for a lot of people in the world. The way some spend Christmas must really put in perspective for them what they have...and what they don't have. Just how blessed or alone they are."

"Do you leeches not celebrate Christmas?" Jacob asks, noting the way he talks so speculatively about it.

Edward smirks dryly. "We do...but it is not really the same. It's different when you don't exactly have a conventional kind of family."

Jacob shifts his feet a little restlessly, and Edward hears something frustrated in his head.

"Actually, I am _not _meaning to talk about myself," he says. "Yes, I come here every year at this time because this date makes me especially aware of the passing of time in ways hardly anything does and also makes it unbearably impossible for me to ignore my loneliness without her. But mostly, it is to check on her. At least...it started out that way, and as nothing else. I used to dread having to come here before my feelings about seeing her life here became...more complicated. But I imagine there isn't a more appropriate time once a year to try to get a fair impression of how she is doing now than this day."

"It isn't your job to make sure she's happy," Jacob says, losing his patience and starting to sound angry. "That's my job now and there's nothing you can do anymore. Except leave her alone."

A deep, stabbing pain flashes across Edward's face before it is replaced with a look of defiance. "I told you this would happen, Jacob Black," he says. "I told you that even if she chose you and I did all I could to make it easier for her rather than keep fighting over her, I would still never be able to completely let her go. If you love Bella and intend to stay with her for the rest of her life, you either need to get it over with and kill me or accept that I'm always going to be a part of her life in some way."

Jacob is close to losing it now, his hands in fists at his sides. "And what about my _children's_ lives? What about my twelve-year-old daughter already knowing monsters exist? What the hell is next?"

Edward goes quiet, suddenly looking guilty, and for a long moment he seems to have nothing to say.

"Look..." Jacob sighs heavily, getting a little calmer and under control again. "I'm sorry about what you couldn't have with Bella. I _am_grateful for that time I know you helped Sarah. I don't even think I can bring myself to truly hate you anymore, and I really don't like having to say this...But _stay away_ from my girls. And I _know_ I don't have to tell you to stay away from Bella. Or are you really too dense to realize how much it would _still_ kill her to find out how completely you've failed to move on after all this time?"

Edward is shaking his head. "You don't understand," he says. "I swear to you, I would never, _ever_ reveal myself to her. With Sarah...that was a terrible mistake, and I am sorry. If I'd had any idea she would be able to piece everything together I never would have allowed her to see me. But it was one of the things I promised Bella the last time that...that we spoke..." His speech became weak for a moment and trailed off as it seemed too difficult for him to think about it. "I must let her move on as much as she will ever be able to. I must never bother her again."

Jacob has become almost completely pacified now. For a while he quietly reflects on everything Edward has told him, and then he asks, "What else did you have to promise her?"

Edward seems caught off guard by him wanting to know this. He looks away from his eyes uncomfortably, staying silent a long time.

Jacob gets the message that he doesn't want to answer and tries another question. "What you said earlier...about how this has become more complicated for you. What did you mean?"

Edward thinks a while about how to explain before he answers, able to understand the concerns behind the question. "As I'm sure you can imagine to some extent, seeing Bella again at all, even for a moment, is always extremely painful for me. I see the ways she has changed so much, when to me it seems like just a short time since I first knew her as that teenager. That is one of the worst parts of it—seeing just how quickly that past that I cherish is slipping away and becoming more and more impossible to ever be reclaimed, perhaps even if something were to happen to you now. And even though I know it does not mean I don't still have a place in her heart and I understand that this is completely different for her as a human, it can be unbearable to see her surviving so well without me when I still struggle every day and always will. I never imagined when I started coming here to watch her that it would be so difficult, because of course I _want_ her to be happy. But I have to give you some credit. It's _terrible_ to see how perfect and wonderful her life really is now. It is far worse than I ever could have feared. Bella has absolutely everything I always wished I could give her. You and her never even fight!"

Jacob shakes with a short laugh before he can help it, and then grins sheepishly at Edward's surprised expression. "Well...maybe never on _Christmas_," he admits.

Edward manages to smirk dryly before continuing. "However, as much as it hurts to have to see it right before me in such detail, it is always a great relief to see that Bella is, in fact, happy. And my immediate reaction to having to see her so changed may always be painful, but at the same time it's quite extraordinary to see the person she has grown and matured into instead of remaining the same as a teenager forever. Knowing that my suffering has made all of this possible makes my suffering more bearable. And then...I have found other reasons to keep coming back as well..."

He goes quiet a while, looking uncomfortable again and clearly not knowing exactly how to say the rest. "I know I told you that time years ago that I would keep some kind of watch over her in hopes that you might have to leave her someday," he says. "I would like to be selfless enough to be able to say I have absolutely no wish anymore for that to ever happen, for her sake and your daughters', but there will always be a part of me that desperately wants it despite all reason. But this is hardly even about that anymore. I hope you can believe that my intentions in coming to see Bella are entirely harmless and I would never do anything to intentionally disturb the life she has with you. And...I know you really won't like hearing this and I do not expect you to understand, but I really do care about Sarah and Allie. In a way I don't think I can possibly explain. It gives me immense joy to be able to watch them and hear their thoughts, but none of the kind of pain along with it that I feel every time I see Bella again."

He stops speaking and waits a moment, as if expecting Jacob to start threatening him. But Jacob only keeps standing still, his face controlled, and waits for him to go on.

"You see, it's incredible...I feel like I have learned so much about Bella that I never understood before by being able to read her children's minds," Edward says. "Because they are part of her, and take after her in many ways. Especially in Allie, it seems like I can see what she was like as a child. Of course I cannot help but wish they were mine too, but nonetheless, that is something I never could have dreamed of being able to see some day. And to be able to just watch Bella's family the way I can, experiencing everyone's thoughts, even for such a short time every year...it feels almost like actually being part of her life again. And getting to know her children in the small ways I have has given me something to be optimistic about, in a way. I used to think of the rest of my life in terms of how many years she must have left, feeling absolutely no hope about what will come beyond that and never being sure what I can possibly live for after she is gone. Now it isn't so simple. I see, I _feel_, so clearly when I watch and savor all the ways they are so like her, that she will still live on in a sense..."

"So then what _will_ you do after Bella's dead, to keep giving your life that kind of semblance of meaning?" Jacob asks. "Just start spying on her kids instead?"

Edward gives an apologetic sort of sigh. "I honestly don't know. Not for certain yet. All I know is that for someone who practically only lives for something I only allow myself to have one day a year, I am doing considerably well. I have found something that gives me enough hope to get by, and I don't think I can say how much it will take for me to keep that once she no longer exists in this world until I have become faced with that problem. But I _can_ promise you that I would never dream of intervening in your daughters' lives in any way. I might feel the need to watch, but I would never _touch_ their lives, not unless something like Sarah's accident in the kitchen was to happen again."

Jacob stays silent a long time as something slowly registers in his head. "The other promise you made her," he says as he realizes it. "It was that you would never try to get yourself killed again, even if you lost her...Wasn't it?"

Edward sighs softly again, still not wanting to talk out loud about that. It seems to cause him physical pain to answer, "Yes."

Jacob gives a small nod. "But you only said it because you never thought she'd actually leave you."

"Not exactly. At the time I said it, I was merely hoping I would be able to be that strong if needed, even as I knew it might as well be a lie. But it was getting close to the time she wanted to be turned, and I was feeling more and more horrible about it. I couldn't go through with it unless I was certain she wanted it for the right reasons, not because she felt she _had_ to do it for me. So I did my best to be convincing in telling her I had realized after what happened in Italy that it would be wrong to hurt myself and I could never think about doing that again. Surely enough, that was what started it. She'd had all these clear ideas of her options for her future, and this suddenly changed the way she saw everything, even if she didn't want to face it at first. But I could tell. She was beginning to question everything."

"So did you refuse to change her then?" Jacob asks. "Or leave her? Was that what finally sent her to me?"

"Believe me, Jacob. If that were the case, I would have given in and stolen her back, one way or another, a long time ago."

Jacob's face is slowly changing to an expression of shock and awe. "So then...she chose me," he says in a slightly weak voice. "She actually _chose me_."

Edward raises his brow a little. "Didn't she ever tell you as much?"

"Well, sure. In her own words. But I never thought I could be sure it was the entire truth. Or not just a less painful version of the truth."

Edward shakes his head a little. "You know...I am well aware by now of the ways you're still troubled by it. I know you worry that you do not make her happy enough to make up for everything she gave up. I know you feel sometimes like you could still lose her so easily, as if you have to be perfect to make this whole life worth it...Frankly, I'm disappointed._ You_ are the one who is supposed to know her better than that. If _I_ can tell just by seeing you together for a few hours once a year, when I still can never hear a single thought in her head, shouldn't you be able to see it?"

As Jacob stands frozen in a surprised stupor still processing the meaning of all of his words, Edward looks over at the house, going silent with intense thought for a while. Then he looks back at Jacob and says, failing to hide a trace of deep sadness in his voice, "You've been out here a long time. She must be waiting for you."

He turns and starts to walk away at a relaxed pace. Before he can get too far away very fast, Jacob looks over at him and stops him by saying, "Edward."

He turns and looks back. Jacob just looks down at the ground a while, struggling to find the right words to say and not even knowing exactly what he wants to say. Then he looks back up at him, sighing softly, and says only a little grudgingly, "Merry Christmas."

Edward's mouth turns crooked in a small smile. He gives him a dignified, respectful nod before turning away again.

Soft, warm yellow light spills out onto the porch from an opening door. "Jake?" Bella calls from inside as Jacob looks toward the house.

A strong, icy wind blows past, and when he glances back in the other direction, Edward is gone.

* * *

He wakes up, and she is there. After fifteen years she is still right there beside him. And not going anywhere.

Now that he can be sure neither of them will ever see Edward Cullen again, he is able to think of him on this day and understand the sentiment he wrote in an invitation to a wedding that never ended up happening: _"Thank you. For her, for everything."_

He has now gone long enough without phasing to start aging again. He feels the cold in winter the same way she does. But this time of year doesn't bother him like it used to. The chilling wind is harmless, bringing with it no haunting voices; the earth quiet underneath the heavy blanket of snow with all souls sleeping serenely there rather than clawing out from the past; everything turned to overwhelming warmth and beauty on the most peaceful of days.


End file.
